Articles and devices for providing a sealing arrangement between two surfaces are well known. Depending upon the particular type of seal which must be achieved and the environment in which the seal will operate, particular types of gaskets and seals have been developed to accomplish adequate sealing and to ensure that the outside environment does not impinge in the area which the seal is intended to protect. To accomplish these goals, prior seals and gaskets have generally been made up of a sealing strip and an attachment mechanism that is applied to the strip to ensure that the gasket or seal will adhere to a pair of surfaces and perform the sealing function.
Weather stripping is typical of the above-mentioned gasket arrangement for sealing a pair of surfaces. For example, weather stripping which is especially adapted for use on motor vehicles to seal the openings around doors and windows usually consists of tubular covers made of a soft material such as rubber, and a series of zigzag loops which are adapted to secure the rubber to the door or window of the car. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,060,353, Tea; 2,102,392, Tea; 2,121,854, Breer; and 2,121,893, Tea. The aforementioned patents generally teach a number of zigzag loops which encircle a core that is inserted through the tubular rubber covering and a fabric or panel member that covers the tubular covering to provide a unitary structure. The zigzag loops are not secured to the core, but merely slip onto the core after they are bent into a particular arrangement for insertion into the tubular member.
Weather stripping as taught in the above patents is typically only useful for protecting the interior of a car from inclement weather conditions. Such gaskets do not provide adequate sealing in high pressure or high temperature environments, suffer the infirmity of advanced degradation of the soft tubular material which provides the seal, and therefore provide inadequate sealing once the seal ages in any significant manner. Thus, the aforementioned weather strips do not satisfy long-felt needs in the art for adequate gasket and sealing arrangements which economically and efficiently attach to a surface defining an interior structure which must be sealed.
As can be seen from the above-referenced weather strips, it is necessary to provide an attachment mechanism to the weather strip so that it can permanently seal the surfaces. To this end, prior clips and fastening devices for use in securing rubber weather seals and gaskets to doors have been utilized. In general, these fastening devices are embedded in a material such as plastic and consist of head and leg portions which may be formed from a single piece of wire. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,643,433, Scott, at col. 3, lines 38-43. The head portion is engaged with a metal piece in the surface while the wire shank or legs are inserted through an opening in, for example, an automobile body. See Scott at col. 3, lines 55-61. Individual fasteners with wire shanks and legs may have various shapes and may connect rubber gaskets to oven doors through a flange. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,988,788, Saponara, at col. 1, lines 12-17; U.S. Pat. No. 2,139,329, Fessler, at col. 1, lines 42-46.
Other various shapes and arrangements of clips or fasteners have been devised as attachment mechanisms for gaskets. Attaching clips may be looped out of wire to be engagable with a coil spring member in a weather strip and can comprise a base divided into two portions to provide a torsional action which holds a gasket in the door of a car in a firm manner. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,167,824, Berwanger and 3,059,299, Sarafinas. Individual fasteners may also consist of simple bent wire clips, or more complex tabs that project upwardly and which are deformable for grabbing the periphery of a sealing member which will adhere to a surface. See U.S. Pat. No. 2,867,464, Crampton and U.S. Pat. No. 4,783,087, DeCore et al.
Thus, prior attachment mechanisms for sealing weather strips and gaskets to surfaces are usually provided in multiple fashion and attach individually to a gasket so that it can be clipped to a surface which the gasket is intended to seal. However, this arrangement is extremely costly since a large number of individual fasteners must be provided to the gasket in order to effect adequate sealing of the surface and the clips are not usually optimally placed on the gasket to provide effective sealing of the gasket to the surface. Prior individual clips are therefore not economical and fail to solve a long-felt need in the art for an economic and efficient device to provide attachment of a sealing gasket to a surface.
In efforts to ensure that sealing gaskets are adequately fastened to surfaces, prior clips have been integrally attached to springs and frames, or molded from a single piece of wire. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 3,167,826, Watzl et al., col. 2, lines 27-31. This type of sealing gasket may be reinforced with a sinuous wire which is bent into a zigzag corrugated shape to provide snap fastener projections which are spaced lengthwise of the sealing strip and which conform to the shape of the door which the gasket will seal. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 2,938,249, Milne, at col. 2, lines 28-34; U.S. Pat. No. 2,579,072, Harris, at col. 3, lines 25-29.
Similarly, prior sealing gaskets for use with oven doors may be bendable into a rectangular shape and have a wire that is simultaneously drawn through the base of the gasket while the gasket is being extruded. In such an arrangement, resilient metal clips are used to grip a base and extend to apertures to secure the gasket to the oven. See U.S. Pat. No. 4,538,381, Vogel, at col. 2, lines 23-44. However, none of the aforementioned gaskets which are adapted to seal the space between surfaces provide adequate rigidity and structure to the gasket to ensure a good seal, or reduce the number of integrally formed clips to hold the gasket against one of the surfaces. Thus, the above-mentioned gaskets and seals are not economical and are difficult to implement.
Other arrangements for sealing ovens and oven doors are disclosed in French Patent No. 2,491,120, Marchand. The Marchand patent teaches a tubular braid having a metal wire inserted therein. Connection mountings are inserted into the holes of an oven door and have curved members with a free end and a sharp border. The free end with the sharp border pierces a glass tubular fitting during the mounting process and engages the metal wire at a curved portion of the mounting. In operation of the connections disclosed in the Marchand patent, the connections are first mounted to an oven door and then pierce the tubular fitting to make connection with the wire inserted therein to cause the tubular fitting to provide a watertight seal between a watertight surface and the oven door. However, the apparatus disclosed in the Marchand patent fails to reduce the number of required clips to seal the tubular member to the door. Furthermore, the connections disclosed in the Marchand patent are not radially rigid and so are not adapted for efficient insertion into the openings. In fact, it is believed that the use of the wire insert disclosed in Marchand provides an undesirable "hinge" effect for the connections causing the connections to swivel around the wire, thereby degrading the stability of the connections, reducing the tendency of the connections to remain radially rigid in a plane containing the connections, and making it difficult to mount the gasket to a surface to be sealed. Thus, the prior weather seals, gaskets, and sealing strips described above fail to fulfill long-felt needs in the art for rigid gaskets to seal the space between two surfaces having clips which are adapted to provide an efficient interface of the gasket with a surface to be sealed.
Woven tubular gaskets with continuous integral attachments are known to provide sealing of a space between two surfaces. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,822,060, Moyer et al. The Moyer et al. patent teaches a woven tubular gasket having a continuous integral attachment which is contained within the woven tubular gasket and which has protrusions which extend through or are extendable through the walls of the woven tubular gasket to engage openings in a substrate. See Moyer et al., col. 2, lines 9-18. The protrusions are adapted to snap into the openings of a surface and the attachment also contains zigzag portions which line up substantially perpendicular to the plane of the protrusions to provide lateral stability for the woven tubular gaskets. See Moyer et al., col. 8, lines 33-53.
While the Moyer et al. patent teaches oven gaskets which partially solve the aforementioned long-felt needs, gaskets and clips provided in accordance with the present invention more readily solve these long-felt needs as will be understood by those with skill in the art with reference to the following detailed description read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.